I am an Affirmative Action baby. Long Island Newsday paid my college tuition, in part, because of the color of my skin. It was my chocolate hue, too, that opened wide the door for my first job out of college, as a reporter forThe Associated Press. I tell you these things because the Supreme Court will rule any day now on whether public universities can consider an applicant’s race in their admissions policies, changing the landscape of Affirmative Action. And as the discourse on the subject intensifies in anticipation of the ruling, I’ve grown mad tired of the chatter.

Chatter about exactly what Affirmative Action does.

Chatter about whom it’s helped and who it’s affected.

And especially the chatter about how awful and ineffective it is.

I readily raise my hand to say that those who argue against it are either clueless, blind or straight lying about how Affirmative Action affects mainstream America (read: white folks), and certainly how it changes classrooms, our workforce and lives.

This Affirmative Action baby’s story? My parents were by no means rich or educated: we lived a middle class existence financed by my parents’ factory jobs, and by the looks of it, we were living the American dream: Mom and Dad had a nice house with a yard and two decent cars to get them to work and church and bowling on Saturdays. But they were only a few paychecks off of having to ask for help, and, on a few occasions when my dad couldn’t find work, they did get that help. There were no fancy family vacations. New clothes came on special occasions—the start of the school year, Easter and Christmas. And extracurricular activities we take for granted today—eating out, taking in a movie or a concert, throwing a fancy birthday party—were rare because money and time were at a premium. Basically, money was tight. Read more…

Just hours before he took to the basketball court in Game 4 of the NBA Finals between his Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dwyane Wade was in a different court, battling to have custodial rights stripped from ex-wife Siohvaughn Funches-Wade, who was arrested this past weekend for refusing to hand over the couples’ sons to their dad for Father’s Day.

Through his attorney, James Pritkin, Wade appeared in court yesterday to present a filing in which the NBA star accused Funches-Wade of using their children as “the proverbial pawns” in their nasty, drawn-out divorce case. “This court must take action to protect our minor children from further exposure to the present environment S.L. creates while they are in her care and preventing S.L. from exercising her parenting time in a manner that is harmful to our children,” Wade wrote in the filing. Read more…

I find myself consistently fascinated at how angry and ugly women can be on Vh-1 reality shows. Rather than attempting to understand the inner beauty that makes a human being lovable, too many seem to think that attraction comes down to long hair, a short dress and a shapely backside.

The women on these reality shows actually scare me. They seem determined to remain consistently angry at someone about something. There is almost nothing that would make me proud to have them as daughters, sisters or mothers in my own family. The idea that these women are serving as role models for an entire generation of young women is sad, sick and disturbing. Read more…